Sunday, August 02, 2009(Confessions of a Baaad Wonderfest Show Reporter)

Ok, time for a confession here. I actually started this report on last year’s Wonderfest Show, uhhh, LAST YEAR SOMETIME,(directly after the show). Unfortunately, due to whatever circumstances came to be, I never did complete it.

After recently working on and completing this year’s Wonderfest Show Report, I decided to go back, blow the dust off of this old one and finally complete it. Even though the written-text portion of the report might not be all that interesting, the associated pictures would probably be nice to view. (Expecially since otherwise, they'd just been taking up space on my computer's hard drive).

In addition to all of the items just mentioned, this show also includes an abundance of horror, science fiction, comic book, cartoon, and anime figure and vehicular models and modeling supplies, along with all sorts of related collectibles – all under one roof.

The Wonderfest Show takes place in Louisville, Kentucky. Traditionally, this occurs around the Memorial Day Weekend of each year, at the Executive West Hotel. However, this year, due to renovations that the hotel was going through, the show was moved back to the July 19th weekend, and physically moved across the street to the Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center.

(Monday, July 21 2008 – Arrival back at home)
On the Monday evening of July 21 (2008), I arrived back from the latest installment of Wonderfest.

The distance to the hotel is listed by Mapquest to be 728 miles, taking 11 & ½ hours to drive by car. I was able to shave an hour off of the time on my return trip, though.

Just as was the case last year, this year I again went solo. Initially, I had my brother David hooked to come along once again. However, once I snagged a fellow model builder (Kit Rees) to share the room (and associated expense) for several days, David decided to skip the trip.

This year, just like last year I ended up leaving for the show a day early, on Thursday, to be "refreshed" for the Friday’s pre-show festivities. However, unlike last year, I gave up on any illusions of leaving during the weeee morning hours of Thursday.

(Thursday, July 17, 2008 @ 1:15 pm – Departure)
On the Thursday before the show, at 1:00 in the afternoon I was in my car and on my way to Wonderfest. I had been up until 2 am Thursday morning collecting and organizing materials, supplies and models that I’d be taking with me for a Seminar that I’d be conducting. I was also doing some last minute packing of some models that I intended to dump…uhhh, that is, sell to fellow modelers at very reasonable fees. Because of this, I knew from the get-go that I wasn’t going to be getting on the road early Thursday morn.

So, after waking up at 10 am, I completed my packing, loaded up the car and was on my way.

I once again traveled South, via 295 (in New Jersey) & 95 (in Delaware and Maryland), until I reached the Maryland area. Then, I veered off westward towards West Virginia and finally Kentucky.

I stopped 3 times filling the tank up with gas, along with making a pit-stop at an I-Hop Restaurant located somewhere along the way, to get a late day-breakfast.

Finally, at around 1 in the morning on Friday, I arrived at Louisville. I decided to check into a Red Roof Inn, (which was located 15 minutes away from the Executive West Inn) for the night. The $50.00 savings for the room made this an easy choice. (That $50.00 would & could go a long way towards a nice Wonderfest model purchase).

Actually, on that note I had decided ahead of time to really, REALLY LIMIT my Wonderfest purchases this year. The fact that I had most of my previous 2 years of Wonderfest models STILL packed up in the corresponding plastic transportation boxes made me realize that I REALLY didn’t need to add all that much to this collection.

Sooo, this year it was my challenge to keep those purchases down to a bare minimum. (I know! “YEAHHHH, RIIIIIGHT!)